Fluid

****TRIGGER WARNING**** Oblique and minimally detailed descriptions of childhood maltreatment are discussed in the recovery journey talked about below.

A fluid is a substance that can take the shape of whatever vessel into which it is poured. I have been a fluid for over 30 years, and I am only just now in these past few months awakening to that fact and what it means. My counselor last year suggested that I try new things to find out my feelings about them. He encouraged me to try something that I have always wanted to do but haven’t. I tried to make plans to try white water rafting, but it all fell apart and my friends and I were unable to make it happen.

I kind of understood where he was going with his request. He is able to see things that I can barely grasp from my perspective. Mainly because he is a guide on my journey, but he cannot do the work. He can see more of the picture because he doesn’t have to feel or see the revelations of my mind from my past. I don’t mean to say he is without emotion because there have been more than a few times that I would be describing and event in this dead flat voice, and I would hear him choke up as he asks a question to make sure he heard me correctly. There have been many a session I didn’t even cry until I heard or saw his emotions. It was like I could feel, but what those feelings meant beyond their intensity was not within my knowledge.

In my sessions, I have learned to put words to my emotions. I have learned to quantify and qualify my pain, my anger, my fear, my gut wrenching despair. To find my healing, I have to feel what the little girl who was forgot in order to survive. Do you know how much hope a child carries? Do you know that no matter the difficulties and problems there is still a piece of that child that will hope because hope is life. Hope means that there are possibilities.

My hope, my survival, was in my ability to be fluid. I learned quickly to become whatever the person in front of me needed, wanted desired. Some of them would be very straight forward, and all they really wanted was a hole to fill. The hard ones were the ones who wanted more. W was my main caretaker outside of my family. Her and her husband are the ones responsible for breaking me and beginning my training as a sex slave. She was also one of the most sadistic people I have ever personally met and interacted with on a regular basis. She was unpredictable in her desires and wants and needs.

In the beginning she was fairly straightforward, she wanted me to obey and service her and her husband, until he died. After he died, she became harder and more harsh. I could not work out the when, but at least once a week there were days when what she really wanted was my pain however she could get it. She would make me do things, only to flip and say that is something only bad girls do. Then there would be punishment. She would take my most basic rights like going to the bathroom and make it into something humiliating. She got such a thrill out of watching me trying to please her on days when her pleasure was really watching me fail and continue to try anyway.

I became fluid in those days. I learned to do it without thought. In all situations, I would analyze it and determine how best to survive. If it was being loud and silly, then that is what I was. If i needed to be the strong, do everything, gopher girl, then that is who I was. If I needed to be sexy and knowledgeable, then that was who I was. If they wanted my innocence and purity, then that is what I would give. I did not really exist beyond their desires. My opinion would only come out after the path of least resistance had been determined, and it would change with the wind because I craved safety, security, and what measure of hope of survival I would get by just agreeing and being what you needed.

The reality of living my life like this brought me to my knees a few months ago and threw me into the worst depression I have had as an adult. I didn’t want to live with this reality. It broke my heart to realize that my whole life, in every interaction, small or large, I made myself fit for you, whoever you are to me. I did it, not because I was asked, but because so very long ago it was how I lived. It was how I minimized the pain that was coming whether I liked it or not. It was why I carried such guilt over things that were done to me. It was how I could keep my hope. My hope that ensured my survival and kept me going.

I pulled myself away from almost all interactions with people simply because I no longer had a vessel to fill and I was a puddle on the floor. I couldn’t have told you how I felt about anything. I could tell you that my favorite color was purple, one of the few things I have always known about myself. As I began to sort and come to terms with this aha moment, I began to solidify. I began to realize that there was more substance to me, and a lot of it had been found in the past few years.

I no longer want to be purely fluid. I want to know what I really think and feel in situations without first taking taking the temperature of my surroundings. I want to have dreams that are mine, and even if they are similar to yours, I will have my own milestones, my own difficulties, my own joys, my own journey that cannot be co-opted by you even accidentally. There are situations in life where it is necessary to bend and adjust for others, but not at the expense of my whole. There are also situations in life where it will be necessary for another to bend and adjust for me, but again not at the expense of their whole. I do not want to be so solid I am brittle, but I no longer wish to fill the vessel where you think or want me to be kept.

There is another kind of fluid, and it is found in the grace of movement and form. Fluid is found in the way that one move of the body comes from the one before. As I heal on this journey, my movement and my life will be more fluid. One moment, one event will build and become the next, and the next, until a grace filled dance is what will define my life and not the shape of a vessel given to me by another.